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"We’re all children of Mother Earth, and that’s why I’m here, because I feel we’re all threatened by what’s happening. As a planet, we’re threatened. I feel that the fossil fuel age is ending. It’s having its first death gasps. And we need to keep pushing. We need to stop this pipeline, which is bringing this really bad fuel from Canada, from the tail of the snake, all the way down to the head of the snake in Texas."

10 Comments:

I know this is a little bit off the pipeline topic.. Anyhow, I just returned home to Norway after working 9 months for a Norwegian oil company called Statoil in Calgary. They have invested large amounts in to the oil sand production in the Athabasca area in Alberta. I've been to the fracking sites and the production plants. And it made me sick. We(the oil companies) are destroying the land for generations to come. I think it is a good thing Neil is trying to make awareness around the subject. Yes, we need the oil. But at what cost? The oil extracted in Alberta are 3 times more polluting then the oil extracted offshore.

This video paints a pretty good picture of what it looks like in the Athabasca area and the song is great:

Extracting oil from an offshore site doesn't require changing the topography of a landscape. Have you seen a tar sands site? It looks like Armegeddon.

I don't get all these people who are down on Neil for protesting. Oil company apologists have their heads stuck in the dirt. The human race needs to ween themselves off of fossil fuels NOW. They will be depleted soon enough. Do we really have to ravage the earth to extract every possible drop of oil? It's insane.

My thanks to Neil, and every person out there on the front lines making their voices heard. This is so important.

MoCH4 I meant extracting the oil in Alberta are three times more polluting then extracting the oil you find offshore. The oil sand isn't as "clean" and have a very high viscosity so you need to use a lot of energy to reduce the viscosity so you can get a product you can use. This is just one of many issues with the oil sand. I work with this things and it disgusts me.

I to work in the oil industry (in Alberta) and have seen the open pit mining up north. I have also seen the reclamation work performed by Environmental Engineers and unemployed farmers (including my uncle), it is unprecedented. In my opinion (and it is only my opinion) all efforts should be directed at holding the government accountable to their promises to reclaim the open pit mines (all open pit mines across Canada and the United States) for that matter.

Could you imagine if we engaged the Canadian and U.S. militaries to plan and execute the cleanup of these sites instead of blowing the snot out of Iraqi's?

Anyway Mother Earth, you sound like you stand on some moral high ground with Oil Sands vs Offshore extraction, did you include the BP spill in your calculation? Or, are you part of the Norwegian "Socialist Privilege Class" and are running around with their agenda?

I don't have a problem with Neil protesting, he is exercising the freedom he has always sang about. What he does not understand is that, in North American, we live in a Free Market society and the oil we are extracting is getting more and more expensive which means it opens things up to new energy technologies to compete with fossil fuels. I would much rather the Free Market decide rather then government regulations, its all about Freedom.

No matter what the oil sand is the dirtiest oil we got. That was my point. You can't discuss that. And I'm not part of some Norwegian "Socialist Privilege Class". I'm a petroleum engineer educated in Norway and at Stanford. And didn't believe the oil industry in Alberta was as bad as it is before I saw it with my own eyes. It is a shame that the company I work for, the Norwegian states oil company, want to be a part of this.

But I guess that's the way it is with oil prices being what they are and the demand for oil being what it is.

The deep water horizon was an accident. The way oil being extracted in Alberta should be something we could do better.

Great conversation, I am not sure if you really are an engineer but I have to take your word for it. The engineers in North America do not back down from a challenge and that is why the Alberta Oil Sands was developed in the first place. There are multitudes of companies (in Alberta and the U.S.) developing technologies that will bring down the cost of extraction in terms of dollar, resource and CO2 costs.

Based on your comment I believe you understand the laws of supply and demand in a free market economy. With oil prices this high two things will happen, new (maybe cleaner) supplies of oil will be found or some Stanford Engineering grad will discover a better cleaner source of energy. Either way the oil sands products will be chocked out of the market.

No matter how you slice and dice it we have to have the free market decide. Freedom is what we kill and die for in the United States and Canada, remember WWII.

Actually I am what you call a petroleum geologist. So I specializes in oil exploration using seismic reflection surveys. My job is to find the reservoir, so you might know a little more about fracking and extracting in Alberta than me ;) Just felt like speaking my mind 'cause seeing some areas of Alberta really made me think a second time about the line of work I have chosen.

Anyway, great talking to you! Reading your last post actually made me think we agree on most of the things concerning "big oil" and what the future should look like.

Let's hope the research on SAGD, VAPEX and THAI leads us some where better. And let's hope Alberta some day looks like it used to.